


Same Old Song & Dance

by lemonsharks



Series: Every Terrible, Necessary Choice [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Camp, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Insomnia, Missing Scene, Morning Routines, snarky flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 12:29:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3209228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/lemonsharks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maker, she hardly counted on the morning anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Same Old Song & Dance

_"Hello?"_

She woke alone, wind tugging against the tent’s sides and letting the cold in. Woodsmoke lingered in the air outside, though the fire had long since died back to embers.

With time, her eyes came into shadow, into gray and black. No barking, no cold _dread_ , no human outlines, but cold, yes. Lots of that; her fingers smarted with it, the dull crushing pain of exposure. 

Full dark, hours to go til morning; she blinked, rubbed the sleep from her eyes with fumbling hands, listened. Wind, and the non-sound of drifting snow. No use lying back down now. _Fantastic_.

She dressed. It took a bit to extract her clothes from the tangled bedroll and blankets and ground cloth, but she found them, and her gloves, and the woolen cap she wore beneath her helm. She’d cursed it at sea level, three thousand feet below, in the sticky warmth of not summer yet but _soon_. She thanked the Maker for it now, against the biting, bone-aching cold.

The fire needed tending, needed feeding, and so she did. Split limbs from yesterday evening—dead inside and sheltered from the storm—caught and burned after a fashion. Dry tinder, dry twig, dry branch; she had tinder. And luck enough to get it burning. The empty clouds overhead hid any way to tell the time. Leaving now for water from the ice-crusted stream would be foolish, despite her thirst.

"You’re up." Alistair, from the mouth of his own tent. No creak of sleep in his voice.

"It’s _cold_ ,” she replied, the sorriest of all possible explanations. She did not say, _you left_ , but he winced into the space where those words should have gone.

He disappeared inside, and reemerged with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and his sword in his hand, which he put down within easy reach.

"Worried?" she asked, when he sat on the log beside her.

"Only insofar as we’re marching to our deaths. I couldn’t sleep."

She stole half of the blanket, not large enough for two. Not warm enough for this thrice-damned mountain. Infinitely small pinpricks of snow caught and melted in her unbound hair, chilled her neck, wet her socks.

"Dreams?"

"Guilt. Same old song and dance—I didn’t want to wake you."

She shrugged. “That worked well.”

“ _That’s_ why I didn’t want to wake you.”

She made a noise in her throat; half apology, half refutation, and inched closer. The fire cracked and spat, steady even with the wind. Tomorrow’s breakfast—this morning’s breakfast—would probably be hard biscuit crumbled down and boiled into a mash, with melted bacon fat to keep them upright into the morning again. Hare if one wandered into the snares they’d set last night.

She wasn’t counting on a hare. Maker, she hardly counted on the morning anymore.

"Someday," she said, "I’m going to sleep in a feather bed, wake of my own accord, and…"

"Walk into a town without someone trying to run you through?"

"I was going to say, ‘and start my morning with breakfast in bed,’ but yes. I could get to like not being stabbed."

The mountain song birds twittered in the canopy overhead, their bright little calls almost like lights against the sky. Half an hour til dawn, more or less. Alistair stood and stretched, his neck and shoulders cracking. He dropped the blanket around her and took up his sword.

"You want to cook, or rouse the others?"

"I _want_ to go _home_. But I’ll wake everyone up, if you’ll handle breakfast.”


End file.
